Warm Air Drift

tamste

I have just received a survey of the heating in my home (a bungalow) and note that the calculations for the bedrooms includes the term of "warm air drift" from a hall storage heater as the primary heating source, with only panel convection heaters specified for the bedrooms because of this.

I am more than a little skeptical of this concept bearing in mind that the nearest room receiving the "warm air drift" from the storage heater as the primary heat source is 12M from the primary heat source, and the furthest 22M from the source, all off a narrow corridor with 2x 90° bends between the source and the bedrooms. 

Whilst I appreciate that warm air will have some circulatory factor, considering the distance between the primary heat source, the narrowness of the corridor (approx. 1M wide and a ceiling height of 2.4M), and the presence of 2 x 90°C bends in the corridor from the source to the bedrooms, I am a little unsure of how this will work. I suspect that the person performing the calculations didn't take these factors fully into consideration.

Any help in providing reassurance on this aspect would be greatly appreciated.

FreeBear

If you sleep with the bedroom doors closed, the warm air simply won't circulate. So you are right to be skeptical.

tamste

Even if the doors are left open, I don't feel it will be likely that there will be any conceivable benefit over such a long convoluted distance.

Reed_Richards

Electric panel heaters are the most expensive form of heating that you can get, in terms of running costs.  If you are running your storage heaters on Economy 7, or similar, then installing another storage heater in your bedroom would give you a much lower running cost.

As for "warm air drift", get yourself a digital thermometer that is accurate to 0.1 C, measure the temperature in your bedroom with and without the door open and see if there is a difference, and if so, how much that difference is.

EssexHebridean

A panel heater for the bedroom is the right advice though, unless you are someone who likes to sleep in quite a warm room. Even the modern HHR storage heaters do lose some heat while they are charging, and of course they release their main heat during the day rather than when you want it - ie first thing in the morning when you are getting up and perhaps a top-up to warm the room before you get into bed. A programmable panel heater will enable you to run it for 30 minutes or so at bedtime, and also programme it to come on first thing to warm the room for getting up - that might even be possible to do on the off-peak hours depending on your E7 timings. The panel heater will of course be far cheaper to purchase that another NSH, and you could even get a freestanding one which wouldn't require any electrical work to wire in! 

When we lived in our old home, we never used the NSH in the bedroom at all as it simply got far too warm in the room to make sleep possible, even with the door open! 

Swipe

I wouldn't be without my storage heater in my bedroom. I run it on a very low setting which keeps any damp away from my clothes in the wardrobe. My bedroom is rarely above 16C when I wake and I use a fan heater to heat the bedroom for 5-10 mins while I'm getting ready for bed to take the chill off the air temperature if the room has become too cold during the evening.

lilac_dawn

EssexHebridean said:

A panel heater for the bedroom is the right advice though, unless you are someone who likes to sleep in quite a warm room. Even the modern HHR storage heaters do lose some heat while they are charging, and of course they release their main heat during the day rather than when you want it - ie first thing in the morning when you are getting up and perhaps a top-up to warm the room before you get into bed. A programmable panel heater will enable you to run it for 30 minutes or so at bedtime, and also programme it to come on first thing to warm the room for getting up - that might even be possible to do on the off-peak hours depending on your E7 timings. The panel heater will of course be far cheaper to purchase that another NSH, and you could even get a freestanding one which wouldn't require any electrical work to wire in! 

When we lived in our old home, we never used the NSH in the bedroom at all as it simply got far too warm in the room to make sleep possible, even with the door open! 

Agree entirely: we have a big bedroom but the panel heater warms it up quickly and well, predominately using off-peak as our off-peak kicks in at 10:30 during the winter.